But few days ago, I read a blog by Facebook security: one paragraph states that "Bugs that lead us to more bugs get bigger payouts. In these cases, the initial bug is much more valuable because the subsequent investigation and fixing of the original bug leads us to additional issues that we can fix."

Frankly, I did not believe this; why would Facebook (or any other company) increase the reward for bugs they found in their internal investigation? The person who reported the original bug would never know that thanks to their report, Facebook fixed bugs the reporter did not find.

It turns out, I was very, very wrong - Facebook does pay for secondary bugs, and are extremely fair about it.

My original report:

Subject: Report a Security Vulnerability -Low-riskCSRF that adds verified students to school groupsTitle:Low-riskCSRF that adds verified students to school groupsProduct / URL: Groups for Schoolshttps://www.facebook.com/groups/Description and Impact: Hello,

This vulnerability allows attacker to make victim a member of groups for schools.It is very specific andlow-riskbecause victim must:1. have school/university email VERIFIED2. not already be part of group

In order for this to work, this must also be victim's FIRST time to join group.

Attacker must know that victim has email verified in one of school/uni domains.

Reproduction Instructions / Proof of Concept:

1. a victim must have verified school address2. victim must make GET request tohttps://www.facebook.com/groups/{{schoolGroupName}}/_join_/for example, in my test case:victim withjxfXXXX@***.eduverified visits site with <img src="https://www.facebook.com/groups/GroupsAt***/_join_/">and becomes member of the group.

Basically, I hoped for the minimum reward because the bug I reported was, as you can see, really crappy one: very specific and has really limited functionality.
Few days later, Facebook Security team replied that they are looking into the issue and will reply when it is fixed. Then came the

Facebook's second reply:

Hi Josip,

OK, just talked with the team. This particular issue is actually a wontfix for them: the goal when you have a school/university email is for you to be associated with your school/university community. However, it did lead us to a related issue which would have allowed for CSRF to add people to arbitrary groups, so we'll be paying you a bounty for that. Nice work. :-)

Wait, what? Of course, I wanted to know what bug did I miss. I checked if _join_ CSRF works for usual groups, and it did not. So where was the bug?

Here is explanation from the sec team:

I don't think it's something you would have found; when we were investigating your report we found references in the code to a _join_if_can_ flag which worked the same way you described but on more general types of groups (not arbitrary groups though: I misspoke earlier). It looks like the flag wasn't being used and it was simple enough to remove. :-)

WAIT, WHAT???!!111??!
I got a (pretty huge) reward for a bug that was IMPOSSIBLE to find to outside people, because it is pretty much impossible to guess the "_join_if_can_" flag - it was not in production. So, a reward on a basis of really, really low-impact report.

Through this blog I would like to say a GIANT THANKS to the Facebook security team, not only for running their program, but also for being extremely sincere and fair towards us, the bug bounty hunters.
Edit: timeline of the report:

18. of October, 2013 - bug reported

18. of October, 2013 - reply from Facebook team (not bot, but team)

26. of October, 2013 - Facebook is working on a fix, should be live soon

20. of November, 2013 - Facebook team replies that their investigation led to another bug and they decided to award me for it

20. of November, 2013 - Chat with the team, bounty rewarded

21. of November, 2013 - This blog published

I am not really sure when exactly they fixed the vulnerability, or found the new flag/bug (never checked as it was low-priority). I can only assume it was between 26th and middle of November.--Josip Franjković

you will need at least some experience in web-sec before starting to look for bugs. Read.Follow bug hunters on Twitter, and check old bug bounty write-ups. That is the best way to learn (at least for me) as you see examples of what other people found, and what kind of bugs gets paid.

Of course, there is the other way - pasting Javascript everywhere. That might get you some bounties if you are lucky, but you will not learn anything.

hey bro.,i also get rewarded by facebook for a finding bugin this bug anyone being blocked by any person can send messages to him/her.as per facebook rules blocked person is not allowed to send messages to whom he/she get blocked from.